Current focus

Character design.

Sample stuff

Click for full size!

From left to right, top to bottom: Kelly, Faray, Lash, two variations of Leaf’s princess outfit, Jig’s magical girl outfit, and Telia. Just try to match up the character classes: Artisan, Berserker, Hero, Paladin, Warrior, and Warrior Mage.

Weekly goals

* Send in art feedback for Jig (normal outfit), Star, and Mina plus feedback for any updates that come back

Comments

Whoops! It’s a few hours past Monday here and I forgot about my weekly devlog. With the one precious transition month we have, my days and nights have blurred together into intense 12-14-hour sessions, so I lost track of time.

As seen above, though, it did pay off! We’re moving along like nobody’s business with six new finished designs. We had a total of thirteen before this past week, so that’s almost a 50% increase—and Eris’ first round was so solid that she’s almost completely done as well. Not only that, but we accidentally stumbled onto a near-finished Misty design during Winter’s process. Even if Flora doesn’t have time to go through with her (Misty), I’m still further ahead with her than I would have been otherwise.

Needless to say, I’m incredibly grateful for this bursting, hectic period of character design. My sleep may be troubled, but my soul is satisfied.

The remaining goals of this month are finishing Tango, Winter, Jig, Minori, Eris, Mina, and Star, then drawing the title screen image if we can fit it in. Because she’s my first artist, I’m giving Flora dibs on the first picture that every player will see.

Even though we technically finished six designs in the last week, all of them were deep into the creation process; out of these other seven, only Tango and Eris are well along. Still, I believe we can do it. Ideally I’d like to cram in one other character, but that’s just my idle hope—it might be unrealistic and I won’t be selfish with Flora’s time.

Last week’s achievements

Current focus

Character design.

Weekly goals

* Send in art feedback for Tango, Kelly, Telia, Jig (alternate outfit), and Lash, plus feedback for any updates that come back

Comments

This week has been all about art—and about realizing my entire life has been a battle between the practical vs. the personal. Perhaps everyone’s life is no different. Go to school and get good grades, but make some friends. Get a good job and make some money, but don’t forget your moral values. Keep your business relationships business and your friendly relationships friendly.

As I wrote my character profile for Minori, I mentioned that she’s a great athlete but she doesn’t need to be portrayed as a tomboy; she’s perfectly comfortable with both her “feminine” and “masculine” sides and slightly more with the former. I wrote that Dreamblazers stars “characters just like me who fit into the margins instead of the majorities.”

What’s that mean? In most demographics, I’m one of the only people I’ve ever met who’s like me. Faith? I grew up agnostic and Christ found me later. Gender? Don’t know, don’t care, maybe even don’t have one. Sexual orientation? None: I’m asexual. Race? Mixed and one of them is such a minority that even Street Fighter, the most diverse series ever, doesn’t represent it.

I choose to be me. Not a statistic, but me. Not a cause, but me. Not even a set of beliefs or values, but me.

So I’m shedding one more element of society. I’m becoming even more me and even less everyone else. And this time it’s on purpose! After nearly thirty years of false dichotomy, no, I will not separate the personal from the practical any longer. I am not my money, my career, or anything less—nor anything else—than a person who loves and feels. A practical relationship isn’t worth having. Flora means a lot to me and I told her so.

With that said, what does it mean for Dreamblazers?

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

Because they all mean a lot to me, seeing a designer go hurts deeply and personally. However, it’s also because of this that after a rough week of tears, reflection, and prayer, I’m confident everything will be alright. I’m the spirit of my characters and I’m always here.

Current focus

Battles!

Sample stuff

Character design for the goddess Autumn and Astrid Crys Alucia (click for larger)

Not drawn exactly to scale since I totally neglected to communicate Astrid’s height. =P I’m still wavering on whether to call Autumn and her sisters “goddesses” because it might not properly convey their power—they’re not tame Thor-tier characters, but they’re also not quite God-tier characters. They’re time-transcendent, multiversal, omniscient, and can warp reality and the laws of physics and magic (ergo de facto omnipresent), but they’re not capable of creating reality. Maybe “Entities” would be a better word.

Weekly goals

* Get at least ten attacks operational
* Get at least ten passive abilities operational
* Send in 50%+ of applicable art feedback for new rounds of stuff

Comments

Until now, I’ve done all my testing with a one-character party to start small, but since I was delving into battles, I added two characters for more interesting dynamics. Before doing anything, the equipment menu revealed that fashion effects were kind of broken for the two new characters, which was especially strange since one of them was a clone of the one I’ve been testing with. I checked and rechecked the two characters and couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I decided I’d put that on the backburner for a while and jump into battles for the time being.

New problem: somehow I’d screwed up the battle camera to a point that getting new mechanics up and running would be impossible from my distorted, odd-angle view. This was also especially strange because I’d never touched the camera—I even checked to make sure. At first I thought it might have been related to spawn point settings I’d made in order to start the party right next to a battle, but nope!

Long story short, this week became half a retread of the week leading into March 24. Hunting through my ~300 fashion effects turned up that a few still had infinite loop issues, which broke the effects for the two new characters. The battle camera was also a consequence of the fashion effects for different reasons—simply giving battles ten times as much time to load (translation: 1 second instead of 0.1) so that fashion calculations could finish fixed it.

That final breakthrough happened on Sunday, so now I can get back into the meat of things. : D

Current focus

Sample stuff

Celty has the most playable time and screen time of any character and she’s finally done!

Weekly goals

* Finish layouts of the prototype status menu and equipment menu
* Send in art requirements for character portraits

Comments

At last the fashion effects foundation is virtually finished. The exact Style bonuses the effects give are subject to change if I find they need to be rebalanced, of course, but since at least the structure is in place, that’s a minor and easy adjustment. (Think of it like painting the door of a house versus building an entire house.) Over 300 fashion effects to check for and so far I’m not crashing the framework, which is amazing in and of itself. =)

I’ve gotten rolling with the menus. They seem like a simple thing on paper and I figured I’d plow through them. In a way, I was right; implementation isn’t difficult. The fine-tuning to maximize space and not look crowded nor empty, though, is the kind of stuff perfectionists could dwell on forever. Aiming to cut it off after at most a week!

Comments

Now that I’m fully up and running on my new computer, the fun has been doubled. : D And by “fun” I mean “speed at which I can change stuff” and by “doubled” I mean more like “quintupled.” And boy oh boy did I need it: I had a few fashion effects that consistently crashed Unity because of infinite loops, so tracking down which ones they were and why involved opening the program over a hundred times between Thursday and the end of Saturday since I was (purposefully) crashing it every few minutes.

Of course, the cause of the crashes came from an unexpected way and place, which is why I hadn’t been dealing with them until now… Since this took longer to unravel than if I’d caught them earlier, I’ll be doing more thorough testing of—well, of everything—than I had been before. I believe I can handle equipment requirements more intelligently than I have until now; fashion effects might be in the same boat, but it’ll take some digging on my part.

Looking really forward to this week, though. Last week was super satisfying despite the issues. =)